The World Wide War on Drugs #9 - Legal Highs are Go!

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Nation's Top Drug Official Calls War on Drugs a Failure

The nation's top drug official went on CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday night and proclaimed the old War on Drugs a failure. Michael Botticelli, who serves as the director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, also said he wants to reform and refocus U.S. drug policy.

When asked by "60 Minutes" host Scott Pelley if the costly drug war that has been in place for more than 40 years had been wrong, Botticelli had blunt words for what he called the "failed policies and failed practices" of the past, noting that those policies were largely responsible for the nation's mass incarceration epidemic.

Drugs quote

"It has been all wrong," he said, noting that locking up drug offenders had not only contributed to a costly, bloated prison system, but had also failed to curtail Americans' drug habit.

"We can't arrest and incarcerate addiction out of people. Not only do I think it's really inhumane, but it's ineffective, and it cost us billions upon billions of dollars to keep doing this."

The Director of National Drug Control Policy position, sometimes called the "drug czar," is responsible for the agency that sets budgets for national drug policies, works with the governments of foreign countries with robust drug exports, and devises strategy for health and law enforcement agencies to combat addiction and drug abuse. Botticelli, who began as acting director just under one year ago, is himself a recovering alcoholic—the first person in substance-abuse recovery to hold the office, according to the New York Times.

On "60 Minutes," Botticelli emphasized the need to recast drug addiction as a problem that cannot be treated by simply locking users up. "We've learned addiction is a brain disease. This is not a moral failing. This is not about bad people who are choosing to continue to use drugs because they lack will power," he said, noting the dangers of the overuse and over-prescribing of opioid prescription pain medication.

"You know, we don't expect people with cancer to just stop having cancer."

Check out the full CBS interview here.

But as progressive as Botticelli came across on drug reform on the program, he was apprehensive to put his support behind the legalization of marijuana, explaining that legalized drugs, after all, kill over half a million Americans annually. He also said that legalizing marijuana could send the wrong signals to users—that the drug is safe and not addictive.

"So, we know that about one in nine people who use marijuana become addicted to marijuana. It's been associated with poor academic performance, in exacerbating mental health conditions linked to lower IQ," he said, adding that he fears states becoming co-dependent on "tax revenue that's often based on bad public health policy."

As ATTN: has reported, research indicates that marijuana is significantly less addictive than other legal substances such as alcohol or cigarettes, which foster chemical dependencies, not necessarily psychological ones. Other research has called into question the correlation between consuming marijuana and killing off brain cells.

Bron: www.attn.com

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Mexicaanse gangster: dertig moorden, maar geen spijt

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De man vertelt ook over zijn jeugd en zijn leven. Hij had vreemde talen willen gaan studeren, zodat hij kon reizen. Maar in zijn dorp was geen middelbare school. Hij is zelf het drugskartel ingegaan, niemand heeft hem gedwongen. Zijn familie weet niet precies wat hij doet, maar ze hebben wel een vermoeden, denkt de man. Hij loopt immers altijd rond met een kalasjnikov.

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Decriminalization of Marijuana in Delaware | Al Jazeera America

The possession of small amounts of marijuana becomes legal starting Friday in Delaware, which joins 18 other states that have removed criminal penalties for carrying the drug. With four states and the District of Columbia having legalized recreational possession of cannabis in the last two years, reformers hope smaller steps like Delaware's will pave the way for the defeat of prohibition nationwide.

The Delaware state legislature in June passed a bill removing harsh criminal penalties for simple possession of up to an ounce of the drug, which had previously been punishable with three months in jail. It now becomes a civil violation with a fine, much like a traffic ticket.

“Delaware’s marijuana policy is about to become a lot more reasonable,” said Karen O’Keefe, who lobbied for the bill as state policies director for the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group that works to reform cannabis laws. “Most people agree adults should not face jail time or the life-altering consequences of a criminal record just for possessing a substance that is safer than alcohol. Taxpayers certainly don’t want to foot the bill for it, and fortunately they will not have to any longer.”

However, there are still a number of circumstances under which Delaware police can arrest a person for having marijuana. Smoking cannabis in public is still a misdemeanor, punishable by less than a year in jail.

"People should do this in their own homes," state Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, a Democrat who helped sponsor the bill, told local news website Delaware Online earlier. "It should not be done in cars. It should be done in the privacy of your own home."

O’Keefe described the decriminalization lobby’s negotiations with lawmakers that left in the final draft some provisions police had wanted — especially the ability to continue to search a person caught with marijuana, even though possession will no longer be a criminal offense.

There is also a bit of fine print that allows for harsher prosecution of marijuana possession — but only for people between the ages of 18 and 21, for whom a second offense will draw an “unspecified misdemeanor” charge and a $100 fine. After they turn 21, they can petition to have their conviction expunged.

“We certainly didn’t agree with that,” O'Keefe said.

MPP will likely lobby for full legalization in the state instead of attempting to tweak the new law, she added.

Decriminalization has been a stepping stone to legalization and regulation of recreational pot use in other states, and Delaware law enforcement officials on Thursday expressed concerns that many state residents might overestimate the extent of the decriminalization law.

"There will be some confusion because people may think marijuana is legal now, and that is not the case," New Castle County Police Chief Elmer Setting told Delaware Online. "Hopefully, they read and understand the law."

Delaware is decriminalizing the drug in what could be a banner year for marijuana policy reform, with legalization laws and ballot initiatives on the horizon in several other states, including California, Maine and Massachusetts. In each state that has lifted criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of pot, decriminalization has served as a herald to an end to the prohibition.

Bron: america.aljazeera.com

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Fatal drug overdoses hit record high in US, government figures show | Society | The Guardian

In 2014 more people died in America from drug overdoses than from car accidents, with heroin and opioids responsible for the majority of deaths

Deaths from drug overdoses have surged across the US to record levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nationwide, overdose deaths last year exceeded 47,000, more than the number of people killed in car accidents and up 7% from the previous year.

Related: Rapid rise of heroin use in US tied to prescription opioid abuse, CDC suggests

The CDC said 61% of the deaths involved some type of opioid pain relievers and heroin. The count also included deaths involving powerful sedatives, cocaine and other legal and illicit drugs.

CDC director Tom Frieden said the rise in overdoses related to opioid use, up 14% from 2014, was particularly concerning.

“The increasing number of deaths from opioid overdose is alarming,” he said. “The opioid epidemic is devastating American families and communities.”

Overdose deaths are up in both men and women, in non-Hispanic whites and blacks, and in adults of nearly all ages, the report said.

West Virginia, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Ohio had the highest overdose death rates. In West Virginia, the overdose rate was 35.5 per 100,000; the national rate was about 15 per 100,000.

State rates are calculated to provide a more balanced comparison between states given the differences in population size.

In sheer numbers, California — the most populous state — had the most overdose deaths last year, with more than 4,500. Ohio was second, with more than 2,700.

The numbers are based on death certificates. Nearly half a million Americans died from drug overdoses from 2000 through 2014, the CDC says.

Drug overdoses — particularly those from prescription opioid painkillers — have become a priority issue for the Atlanta-based CDC. The agency this week released draft guidelines for family doctors, encouraging them to be more careful about prescribing opioids for chronic pain and urging the increased use of naloxone, an overdose antidote.

The CDC released the overall tally last week. On Friday it provided more details, including numbers for individual states.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Heroin trade continues to claim lives as UK drug gangs compete for power | Society | The Guardian

The police shooting of a 28-year-old man in London’s Wood Green was the latest tragic repercussion of a profitable trade for the capital’s Turkish mafia


Ismail Aydin has never seen a man brandish a gun in his shop and hopes he never will. But six years ago, a hitman for the Bombacilar gang shot dead its former owner, Ahmet Paytak, 50, in a case of mistaken identity.

On the Hornsey Road, north of Arsenal’s Emirates stadium, it is deep in the territory of a rival group, the Tottenham Boys. Around the corner there used to be one of the gang’s drug dens. Further along was the Gunner’s Play members-only club and gangland haunt. Both have disappeared, but the killings have continued. Ten murders in a decade are linked to a Turkish mafia war playing itself out in north London.

The latest death was that of Jermaine Baker, 28, shot dead by firearms officers on 11 December during an alleged attempt to free a senior member of the Tottenham Boys being taken to court, four miles from the shop where Aydin works. On Friday the officer who shot Baker was arrested and questioned as part of a homicide investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The power of the Turkish Bombacilar and their Kurdish rivals, the Tottenham Boys, was largely founded on heroin. Contacts in Turkey facilitate the drug’s passage to London.

The EU’s drug agency recently reaffirmed Britain’s status as the narcotics hub of Europe, with reported heroin use the highest across the continent.

“Sadly, the UK continues to consume substantial quantities of heroin and cocaine, and unfortunately demand for an addictive drug will always provide an opportunity for the ruthlessness of trafficking,” said Tony Saggers, head of drugs threat at the National Crime Agency, which tackles organised crime.

Speaking inside the agency’s fortified headquarters in Vauxhall, south London, Saggers said it was not only the large, loyal market that made Britain so attractive to global dealers but the profits on offer to gangs such as the Bombacilar.

The wholesale price of a kilo of heroin is between £20,000 and £30,000. An imported kilo cut at 25% street purity provides enough raw material for 16,000 individual deals at £10 a hit – pushing the takings to £160,000.

Black street gangs are frequently hired to protect turf, occasionally as hitmen. Paytak’s killer on Hornsey Road, 31-year-old Michael James, was from a local outfit recruited specifically for a reprisal shooting. “They’re extremely determined to protect their market, they’re ruthless and predisposed to violence and threats, spreading the fear of violence,” said Saggers.

The antipathy between the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys has resulted in 26 violent incidents in six years, 19 of them involving guns. The parochial nature of the vendetta belies the international character of the modern drug trade. Both gangs supply street dealers selling £10 heroin wraps and crack cocaine “rocks” at the same price. The heroin will have travelled at least 4,500 miles from Afghanistan. The cocaine will have travelled at least 5,000 miles across the Atlantic, the main obstacle for the South American narco firms seeking to exploit the UK market.

“It puts drugs from two different hemispheres into the hands of one street dealer. That requires a global supply chain,” said Saggers.

Crack and heroin are sold by north London dealers as a complementary package. “It is somewhat ironic that the two most addictive drugs are sold together as a package,” Saggers added. The intense high of crack is quickly followed by a crushing low; heroin takes the edge off the downer.

Both the Tottenham Boys and the Bombacilar appear to have no problem in acquiring sufficient amounts of heroin. Almost all the opiates sold by them come from Afghanistan. Cutting the supply of heroin to Britain was one of the main reasons given by then prime minister Tony Blair in 2001 for sending British troops to Helmand province. That war aim has singularly failed. “Almost all the heroin we see here is assessed as having come from the region,” said Saggers.

From Afghanistan, the drug is taken overland via Iran and Turkey, or south through Pakistan, exported from the port of Karachi across the Arabian Sea to eastern Africa, then across the continent to the west coast, often Nigeria or Ghana. Both routes usually end up in Holland. From there, intelligence on the heroin trade identifies ports such as Harwich, Felixstowe, Dover and Folkestone.

The NCA is currently monitoring the potential exploitation of failed states like Syria and Libya for heroin traffickers. Large amounts of heroin passed through Iraq during the sectarian tumult a decade ago. Libya, currently in chaos and close to Europe, is an obvious concern.

“Heroin smugglers are always looking for new transit routes to keep ahead. But the reality is that when you destabilise a landmass, it either becomes more dangerous to move drugs through or it becomes an opportunity. With Libya, we’re not seeing an intelligence picture that reflects either scenario. My opinion is I wouldn’t want to move a high-value amount of drugs through a place that is completely destabilised,” said Saggers.

Regardless of the route, latest assessments indicate that the number of UK heroin users remains broadly static, at around 250,000. Predictions that austerity would usher in a 1980s-style heroin epidemic have proved false. However, analysis of the drug itself reveals an intriguing development: a recent increase in purity that may indicate a desperate attempt to reinvigorate a market that is literally dying off.

“This could well be an attempt to win back a dwindling customer base, but you don’t want it so strong that people start dying,” said drug information analyst Harry Shapiro.

There were 952 deaths that involved heroin or morphine last year, the highest since 2001, compared with 579 in 2012, compounding the issue of heroin’s ageing user base. Tim Millar, from the University of Manchester, said: “I couldn’t say with any certainty that heroin’s going to go away, but young people aren’t getting into it.”

Certainly, the Turkish crime gangs will be keenly aware that heroin is struggling to hook a new generation, regardless of the occasional high-profile casualties like Peaches Geldof, 25, who described heroin as “such a bleak drug”. The National Treatment Agency revealed last year that the number of people under 35 using heroin and crack cocaine was “plummeting”, with an estimated 41,508 15- to 24-year-old users.

Away from the capital, much of the distribution of heroin throughout the UK is controlled by south Asian gangs – although Liverpool remains the preserve of white British gangs. Police have collated significant evidence that Pakistani criminals are actively seeking to corner the heroin market in large parts of Britain, using their connections in cities such as Birmingham and Manchester. Crucially, their turf does not overlap with their Turkish counterparts. “You have Pakistani crime groups and Turkish crime groups in generally different parts of the country and the marketplace seems big enough for both of them. They’re distinct, I don’t recall them working together,” said Saggers. The Turkish gangs’ feud, saud Shapiro, should be interpreted as a localised scrap in a stable market where “everybody knows their place”.

Down on Green Lanes, still within Tottenham Boys territory, many say they cannot remember a more peaceful time. “The gangs used to go around here, but now they keep their heads low,” said Yusuf Ceren, 34, outside the Gaziantep Sultan Patisserie. Scotland Yard, meanwhile, is urging the local community to continue sharing intelligence on the gangs, a request that coincided on Saturday with the emergence of a police intelligence report revealing the Tottenham Boys were using extortion to funnel funds to the PKK, the militant Kurdish nationalists.

As for counter-narcotics officials, the broader battle continues. Saggers said: “It would be wrong to say we are winning; it’s certainly a battle. We haven’t stopped any crime happening in the UK, but we don’t stop pursuing burglars just because we haven’t stopped the problem.”

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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‘Stoner sloth’ anti-drug campaign gets reality check as medical experts walk away | Society | The Guardian

National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre distances itself from widely mocked NSW government ads which depict marijuana users as sloths

A leading drug research centre has distanced itself from the NSW government’s bizarre “stoner sloth” campaign, which attempts to warn teenagers against the dangers of sustained marijuana use by depicting them as disturbingly oversized versions of the South American mammal.

In a pyrrhic victory for the NSW government, the stoner sloth campaign has gone viral but the anti-drug message appears to have lost out to the internet’s dual love of mocking failed ad campaigns, and sloths.

The campaign was initially linked to the National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre (NCPI), which has responded with a statement saying their involvement was limited to providing an initial basic analysis of other anti-cannabis campaigns, and some general recommendations.

“In this case, those general recommendations were things like being aware that teenagers are intelligent and have access to a lot of information, so campaign approaches should respect them and give them credit by avoiding hyperbole,” the statement said.

They said they were not involved in the campaign development and learned of the stoner sloth idea when the ads were released this week, and added: “While we wish the NSW government luck in future cannabis campaigns, the current stoner sloth campaign doesn’t reflect NCPIC views on how cannabis harms campaigns should be approached, as was implied by the media.”

In an embarrassing oversight, the stoner sloth campaign shares a name with an online cannabis store. Leave the Australian domain off stonersloth.com.au and you will be directed to a website with the tagline, “enjoy every smoking experience”.

The Tumblr page for the campaign launched last month, but the campaign and its three videos were released this week.

The first video stars a sloth named Jason, who looks and sounds like a wookiee without the Star Wars royalties. Jason is wearing a Teen Wolf-style basketball singlet. He is asked to pass the salt, a difficult task when you have unwieldy long talons instead of hands, and instead fetches the salad. As the video title says, the struggle is real.

The next video stars a sloth called Delilah, who wears a blue bow perched atop her brow to signify her assigned gender. She is being performance-shamed in class for failing to complete an exam.

The final video stars a sloth named David, who fails to appropriately respond to an anecdote concerning a teenage girl’s abhorrence of people who wear socks with sandals. This clip drew additional criticism because the teenagers (except Dave) are holding red plastic cups that have become synonymous even in Australia with drinking alcohol, thanks to American college movies. The cups have been taken as sending the message that while marijuana is bad, alcohol is fine.

All three videos end with a fellow teenager disparagingly shaking their head and muttering “stoner sloth”.

Thirteen Stoner Sloth parody videos have been posted on YouTube in the past 18 hours.

Even the NSW premier, Mike Baird, was bemused by the campaign, which was signed off by his department.

In a statement printed on Mashable, the Department of Premier and Cabinet said the campaign was developed under its purview in conjunction with NSW Health.

“The stoner sloth public awareness campaign has been designed to encourage positive behaviours in young people before bad habits start, and motivate discontinued use of cannabis before they become dependent,” the statement said.

However public reviews of the campaign on social media have questioned its motivational capacity.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Colombian president signs decree to legalise medical marijuana | World news | The Guardian

New rules on growing and sale are ‘major step’ in fight against illnesses, President Juan Manuel Santos said, as country shifts away from US-backed drug policies

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has signed a decree legalizing the growing and sale of marijuana for medical purposes, a dramatic shift in a country long identified with US-backed policies to stamp out drug crops.

Santos said the new regulatory framework was long overdue given that Colombians had been consuming marijuana and marijuana-based products in a legal void for years.

The new rules “represent a major step that put Colombia at the vanguard and forefront of the fight against illnesses”, Santos said during the signing ceremony for the presidential decree.

Related: Mexico supreme court rules ban on marijuana use unconstitutional

With the new rules, Colombia joins countries from Mexico to Chile that have experimented with legalization or decriminalization as part of a wave of changing attitudes toward drug use and policies to combat it in Latin America.

Colombia has long been identified with US-backed policies to eradicate narcotics production and a sharp decline in levels of violence over the past 15 years is largely attributed to the no-tolerance policing.

Proponents of the new approach say as many as 400,000 Colombians suffering from epilepsy and other ailments could benefit from the clearer regulatory framework.

Colombians for two decades have been allowed to possess small quantities of any narcotic for personal use due to a series of constitutional court rulings guaranteeing the “free development of one’s personality”.

But the congress and the executive branch have been loth to endorse such views, in part because of officials’ skittishness about showing any weakness in a country that is the biggest supplier of cocaine to the US.

Conservative critics in Colombia and abroad see Santos’s drive to reform drug policy, including a decision earlier this year to end a two-decade-old campaign of spraying illegal coca crops with herbicides, as a sign that the government’s resolve is weakening.

Santos, who has acknowledged smoking pot as a journalism student in the 1970s at the University of Kansas, repeated his commitment that the new rules only apply for medical and scientific purposes, not recreational use.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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The man who exposed the lie of the war on drugs | Books | The Guardian

Pablo Escobar was “the first to understand that it’s not the world of cocaine that must orbit around the markets, but the markets that must rotate around cocaine”.


Of course, Escobar didn’t put it that way: this heretical truth was posited by Roberto Saviano in his latest book Zero Zero Zero, the most important of the year and the most cogent ever written on how narco-traffic works. Here is a book that speaks what must be told at the end of another year of drug war spreading further and deeper, that tells what you will not learn from Narcos, Breaking Bad or the countless official reports.

The realisation that cocaine capitalism is central to our economic universe made Escobar the Copernicus of organised crime, argues Saviano, adding: “No business in the world is so dynamic, so restlessly innovative, so loyal to the pure free-market spirit as the global cocaine business.” It sounds simple, but it isn’t – it is revolutionary and, says Saviano, it explains the world.

Saviano – who lives in hiding under 24/7 guard, after death treats arising from Gomorrah, his book about the Neapolitan mafia – and I were due to discuss Zero Zero Zero at the Hay Arequipa book festival in Peru this month. But Saviano was unable to make it, because of difficulties in arranging his movements. For eight years, he has lived in undisclosed venues, with a permanent dispatch of seven carabinieri guards, rarely spending more than a few nights in the same bed. A video link to Peru proved too complicated, but what Saviano had to say was too important to let go, too pressing and radical to lose in the ether of the logistics. In the end we spoke by telephone last weekend.

“Capitalism,” says Saviano, “needs the criminal syndicates and criminal markets… This is the most difficult thing to communicate. People – even people observing organised crime – tend to overlook this, insisting upon a separation between the black market and the legal market. It’s the mentality that leads people in Europe and the USA to think of a mafioso who goes to jail as a mobster, a gangster. But he’s not, he’s a businessman, and his business, the black market, has become the biggest market in the world.”

This is Saviano’s sagacious heresy. For decades, writing on global mafia has presumed a Manichean schism between cops and robbers; our healthy society and law enforcement on one hand battling organised crime on the other (with occasional erring by the former). But the trail blazed by Saviano and very few others demolishes that account, backed by every recent development in Mexico’s narco-nightmare, including and especially the escape, again, of the heir to Escobar’s mantle, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, from supposedly maximum-security jail. Narco cartels like Guzman’s are not adversaries of global capitalism, nor even pastiches of it; they are integral to – and pioneers of – the free market. They are its role model.

We hear much these days about the pros and cons of legalising drugs, but very little about narco-traffic as political economy. Now, Saviano articulates and demonstrates what many of us who write about mafia have been trying for years to shout from rooftops, only none of us climbed high enough, cried as loud, or crystallised it like he does. Here it is, the lie of any dividing line between legal and illegal. Here it is, laid bare: cartel as corporation, corporation as cartel; cocaine as pure capitalism, capitalism as cocaine, known in its purest form as zero-zero-zero – a wry reference to the name of the best grade of flour, ideal for pasta.

Saviano writes in his own distinct style of narrative literary reportage, at once factually informative and impressionistic. He opens Zero Zero Zero with a scathing tragicomic reflection on who in your life uses cocaine: “If it’s not your mother or father… then the boss does. Or the boss’s secretary… the oncologist… the waiters who will work the wedding… If not them, then the town councillor who just approved the new pedestrian zones.” Within three-score pages he has stripped bare the system whereby – and why – the white powder got up their noses. “Cocaine,” he concludes, applying the logic of business school, “is a safe asset. Cocaine is an anticyclical asset. Cocaine is the asset that fears neither resource shortages nor market inflation.” Of course, cocaine capitalism – as brazenly as any other commodity, possibly more so – has “both feet firmly planted in poverty… [and] unskilled labour, a sea of interchangeable subjects, that perpetuates a system of exploitation of the many and enrichment of the few”.

“Cocaine becomes a product like gold or oil,” he adds in conversation, “but more economically potent than gold or oil. With these other commodities, if you don’t have access to mines or wells, it’s hard to break into the market. With cocaine, no. The territory is farmed by desperate peasants, from whose product you can accumulate huge quantities of capital and cash in very little time.

“If you’re selling diamonds, you have to get them authenticated, licensed – cocaine, no. Whatever you have, whatever the quality, you can sell it immediately. You are in perfect synthesis with the everyday life and ethos of the global markets – and the ignorance of politicians in the west to understand this is staggering. The European world, the American world, don’t understand these forces, they don’t have the will to understand narco-traffic.”

In a previous book, soon to be translated, called Vieni Via Con Me – Come Away With Me – Saviano talked about the “ecomafia” for which it is “always fundamental to be looking for terrain and spaces in which to conceal and proliferate itself”, just as a corporation carves out markets. In Zero Zero Zero, he writes about what might be called the genealogy of narco-syndicates, from their paternalistic period of “conservative capitalism” to the lean, mean multinational corporations they have become: buying failing banks, working the credit economy, taking over interbank loans. Permeating the system until they become indistinct from it, until (writes Saviano in Vieni Via Con Me): “democracy is literally in danger”, and we become “all equal, all contaminated… in the machine of mud”.

“So the story of narco-traffic,” he says now, “is not something that happens far away. People like to think of this disgusting violence as something distant, but it’s not. Our entire economy is infused with this narrative.”

For some reason, he says, the Anglo-Saxon world is slower to understand the innate criminality of the “legal” system than Latin societies. “I think the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-American world is infused by a kind of Calvinist positivism; people want to believe in the health of their society,” says Saviano, even though “what this all means is that, for instance, the City of London is a far more important centre for laundering criminal money than the Cayman Islands”.

The mafia, he argues, has a particular way of entrenching its presence and increasing its strength, in a manner almost Darwinian, evolutionary: “the force of the mafia is this. If a mafioso messes up, he dies – and thus they develop a system of survival. When they make a mistake, they are killed and replaced by someone even more ruthless, so that the organisation becomes even stronger.”

Related: HSBC has form: remember Mexico and laundered drug money | Ed Vulliamy

At the start of this year, writing from New York, Saviano described his threatened life under guard in our sister paper, the Guardian, and in this book that followed he asks himself, poignantly: “Is it really worth it?”

“I write about Naples, but Naples plugs her ears,” he laments. It is, he writes, “my fault if the articles I keep writing about the blood spilled in the cocaine markets fall upon deaf ears”. Any reporter or writer on these subjects feels a version of these feelings, but – apart from our colleagues in Mexico or Colombia – with so much less to pay than Saviano has paid: with his liberty and security.

“Sometimes I think I’m obsessed,” he reflects in the book, but “other times I’m convinced these stories are a way of telling the truth”. Here we have it. Whether obsessed or not, Saviano realises the brutal truth: that to understand narco-traffic is to understand the modern world. “You can’t understand how the global economy functions if you don’t understand narco-traffic”, he says in conversation.

A remarkable passage in Zero Zero Zero explains why: a transcription of an FBI tape recording of a seasoned Italian mafioso in New York schooling young Mexican footsoldiers in the difference between law and “the rules”. Laws are there to be broken, he urges, but the rules of the organisation are sacrosanct, on pain of death. “The law is supposed to be for everybody,” Saviano tells me, “but the rules are made by the so-called men of honour. This is how narco-traffic explains the world, by embracing all the contradictions of the world. To succeed in narco-traffic, you apply the rules to break the law. And today, any big corporation can only succeed if it adopts the same principle – if its rules demand that it break the law.”

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Duitsland gaat werk maken van testen piloten | NOS

Duitsland wil vanaf volgend jaar piloten van Duitse luchtvaartmaatschappijen onaangekondigd gaan testen op het gebruik van medicijnen, drugs en alcohol. Dat heeft de Duitse minister van Transport, Alexander Dobrindt gezegd in het blad Bild. Hij dient hiervoor binnenkort een wetsvoorstel in.

Het besluit volgt op de aanbeveling van een werkgroep die na de crash van een Germanwings-toestel in de Franse Alpen was ingesteld. Na de crash bleek dat de co-piloot vanwege zijn psychische klachten niet had mogen vliegen.

In de VS en Australië worden al soortgelijke tests gedaan onder piloten, maar daar is de luchtvaartmaatschappij er verantwoordelijk voor. Wie er verantwoordelijk wordt voor de tests in Duitsland, maakte de minister niet bekend.

Wel benadrukt Dobrindt dat de nieuwe maatregel geen zin heeft, wanneer die alleen door Duitsland wordt genomen. Hij pleit voor een Europese controle.

De Duitse pilotenvereniging ziet niets in de plannen van de minister. Volgens de voorzitter van de vereniging, Markus Wahl, hebben de steekproeven niets met het ongeluk van het Germanwings-toestel te maken en maken ze bij voorbaat een hele beroepsgroep verdacht.

Bron: nos.nl

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Federal judge: Drinking tea, shopping at a gardening store is probable cause for a SWAT raid on your home

In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun. The family was then held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.

The investigation leading to the raid began at least seven months earlier, when Robert Harte and his son went to a gardening store to purchase supplies to grow hydroponic tomatoes for a school project. A state trooper had been positioned in the store parking lot to collect the license plate numbers of customers, compile them into a spreadsheet, then send the spreadsheets to local sheriff’s departments for further investigation. Yes, merely shopping at a gardening store could make you the target of a criminal drug investigation.

More than half a year later, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department began investigating the Hartes as part of “Operation Constant Gardener,” basically a PR stunt in which the agency conducts multiple pot raids on April 20, or “4/20.” On several occasions, the Sheriff’s Department sent deputies out to sort through the family’s garbage. (The police don’t need a warrant to sift through your trash.) The deputies repeatedly found “saturated plant material” that they thought could possibly be marijuana. On two occasions, a drug testing field kit inexplicably indicated the presence of THC, the active drug in marijuana. It was on the basis of those tests and Harte’s patronage of a gardening store that the police obtained the warrant for the SWAT raid.

But, of course, they found nothing. Lab tests would later reveal that the “saturated plant material” was actually loose-leaf tea, which Addie Harte drinks on a regular basis. Why did the field tests come up positive for pot? As I wrote back in February, it’s almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to. A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard’s chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins. Back in 2009, the Marijuana Policy Project demonstrated how easily the tests could be manipulated to generate positive results:

Bron: www.washingtonpost.com

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Drug mules ingesting scores of packages as UK smuggling grows more extreme | World news | The Guardian


Smugglers swallow huge batches of class A drugs, border officials say, with gangs resorting to increasingly drastic methods

Drug mules are swallowing huge batches of cocaine and heroin as gangs resort to increasingly extreme tactics to smuggle class A substances into Britain, border officials have said.

People are risking their lives by ingesting scores of packages containing narcotics worth tens of thousands of pounds, according to Border Force.

Some go to extraordinary lengths to prevent drugs passing through their system. One man went for three weeks without going to the toilet, surviving on only a sip of water and the skin of an apple a day.

The smugglers are known to ingest between 80 and 110 packages each, with drugs wrapped in condoms, balloons and cling film. The average fee for the smuggling attempts is between £1,000 and £1,500, but gangs also use threats of violence.

In one case cited by the Home Office, Jaroslaw Adamski was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to carrying nearly 1kg of heroin in his body when he arrived at St Pancras station in London in February.

Adamski, 51, told Border Force officers he was approached by a man in his native Poland who asked if he wanted to make some money and he was paid ¤15 (£11) per package swallowed.

He claimed he was not told what he was swallowing. Forensic tests later revealed the packages contained 950g of high-purity heroin which, if cut and sold on the streets in the UK, would have had an estimated value of about £155,000.

The majority of the mules target Britain’s main airports but they have also attempted to enter by trains from Europe, officials said.

Andy Coram, the assistant director of Border Force South East and Europe, said: “These cases show the lengths smugglers will go to in their attempts to bring class A drugs into the UK. Those who swallow packages like this are risking their lives and we are seeing more and more sophisticated purpose-made swallower packages which show the organisation behind this type of smuggling.”

Tactics used by the authorities to foil the smuggling attempts include x-ray screening and sniffer dogs trained to identify chemicals secreted in the skin.

In the last year Border Force has seized nearly 8,818lb of class A drugs.

The immigration minister, James Brokenshire, said: “Security is our priority and our officers are not there to just stamp passports; they play a vital role in stopping this type of cross-border crime and preventing dangerous drugs entering the UK which blight communities.”

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Marijuana legalization is already making Mexican drug cartels poorer

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As Bonello reports, the drop in price — and competition from higher-quality US-made marijuana — is hitting drug cartels, too. So now they have to look to other opportunities, or look for ways to deal in high-quality cannabis, to make up for lost profits, or just accept the hit in their finances.

This was a predictable outcome of legalization, but still a big deal and welcome news. One of the major arguments for legal pot is that it will weaken drug cartels, cutting off a major source of revenue and inhibiting their ability to carry out violent acts — from mass murders to beheadings to extortion — around the world. And cannabis used to make up a significant chunk of cartels' drug export revenue: as much as 20 to 30 percent, according to previous estimates from the Mexican Institute of Competitiveness (2012) and the RAND Corporation (2010).

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Don't Let Those Who Opposed Legal Cannabis Profit From It Now

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These days, Canada's cannabis community is feeling like the Little Red Hen from the classic fairy tale.

We remember what happened when we asked, "Who will help us fight against cannabis prohibition?"

"Not us," said the unions. "There are a lot of jobs for us in arresting and jailing cannabis users."

"Not us," said the corporations. "Legal cannabis would hurt our investments in pharmaceuticals."

"Not us," said the politicians. "Instead, we're going to pass stricter laws than ever, because that gets us more votes!"

So we did it by ourselves.

Canada's cannabis community opened bong shops and seed shops, we created cannabis magazines and websites, we held cannabis rallies and opened medical dispensaries, all in peaceful civil disobedience and in defiance of these unfair laws.

When some of us were raided by police and ended up in front of a judge, we asked "Who will help us fund these important court cases, to defend our rights and change these unjust laws?"

"Not us," said the unions. "All these new prisons mean jobs, jobs, jobs!"

"Not us," said the corporations. "We can't patent cannabis medicines, so we don't care."

"Not us," said the politicians. "In fact, we will fight you in court every step of the way!"

So the cannabis community raised the funds ourselves. We used the money from our openly illegal bong shops, seed banks and dispensaries to pay lawyers and cover court costs, chipping away at prohibition one case at a time.

It was through the courts that we forced the government to first create a medical cannabis program, and every single improvement and expansion of the program has come as a result of lengthy and expensive court battles funded by grassroots activists.

Now that we have mostly beaten the laws in court and on the street, with cannabis gardens and dispensaries spreading into every city and town across the country, we ask, "Who will help us sell cannabis and profit from legalization?"

"We will sell it to you for profit!" say the unions. "We know how to sell liquor, and it's all the same thing, right?"

"We will sell it to you for profit!" say the corporations. "We will sell it to you for $15 a gram, as long as the police shut down all the illegal dispensaries first."

"We will sell it to you for profit!" say the politicians. "We will keep the taxes high, so we can pay for all the harm that you cannabis users are causing society."

To which we say, "Get lost! We will keep growing it and selling it ourselves. We already have hundreds of dispensaries across the country that are providing great quality cannabis. We already have dozens of court precedents which have forced your police to stop arresting our people. We already have a thriving culture and a vigorous, successful and diversified cannabis industry. We don't need your help, but thanks anyways."

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Nine Signs the World's War on Drugs Is Waning

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The global anti-drug regime has been in place for more than a half century now, but the prohibitionist consensus has been crumbling for at least 20 years, and the decomposition continued apace this year.

The international treaties that make up the legal backbone of international drug prohibition still stand, but they are under increasing attack at the United Nations, which will take them up again next year. They are increasingly being breached (especially by marijuana legalization at the national and sub-national level) and nibbled away at around the edges by moves like drug decriminalization and some harm reduction measures such as supervised injection facilities.

The Western hemisphere is becoming especially fruitful ground for drug reforms. As the United States retreats from drug war excess at home, its imposition of drug war orthodoxy south of the border erodes, and Latin American countries that have suffered some of the worst drug war excesses now search out different paths. From Tierra del Fuego to the Yukon, change is in the air in the Americas.

Here are nine signs that international drug prohibition eroded more this year.

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Mayor of Mexican city killed only one day after taking office | World news | The Guardian

Gisela Mota, mayor of Temixco and member of leftist party, was attacked at home by four gunmen, newspaper reports

The newly installed mayor of the Mexican city of Temixco was killed on Saturday, according to a tweet from Morelos state governor Graco Ramírez.

Gisela Mota formally took office with the new year on Friday. The Mexico City newspaper El Universal said she was attacked at her home by four armed gunmen.

Several mayors were killed last year in Mexico, where armed gangs financed by the drugs trade control many local communities.

Temixco, located some 60 miles south of Mexico City, has a population of about 100,000.

Mota, a former federal member of congress, belonged to the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution.

Officials with the Morelos attorney general’s office did not immediately return calls seeking additional information about her death.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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New drug driving tests will check for presence of cannabis in system

Minister for Transport, Paschal Donohoe acknowledges that cannabis can stay in system for up to a week and drivers found with traces of it in blood will be charged with an offence regardless of when it was consumed.


Speaking on Morning Ireland, the Minister for Transport wants to create new legislation with stronger penalties in relation to cocaine, heroin or cannabis.

Donohoe acknowledged that cannabis can remain in a person's system for over a week or longer but if drivers are caught with the drug in their system they will be charged with an offence, regardless of when they took they drug.

Currently, motorists who use drugs can be prosecuted only if their driving is impaired but the new laws would see drivers tested for the presence of heroin, cocaine or cannabis in their blood.

A saliva test would be administered on the side of the road and if it returned positive indications then the a follow up blood test would take place.

The Bill, which is being brought before Cabinet today, will set out different unacceptable levels for different types of narcotics.

A different test will be applied to those taking prescription drugs.

A motorist found impaired could face a ¤5,000 fine or six months in jail.

The Minster said that new legislation was needed to combat the issue of driving and drug use.

“In relation to prescription drugs, an impairment test will then be carried out. On the basis of that impairment test, that will form the basis of the gardai concluding whether you’re intoxicated or not due to drugs.

“The message is the same as it is in relation to alcohol, that if you consume drugs that you will run the risk of causing serious accident or injury to other road users.

“What we are now doing is bringing into line our body of law in road law in relation to alcohol to make that completely consistent now with drug testing.”

Bron: www.sundayworld.com

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Ex-drugscrimineel wordt hoofd van Surinaamse veiligheidsdienst | NOS

De Surinaamse president Bouterse heeft Hans Jannasch benoemd tot waarnemend hoofd van de Centrale Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst CIVD. Oud-militair Jannasch was betrokken bij de exploitatie van een xtc-laboratorium in Paramaribo dat in 2003 door de Surinaamse politie werd ontmanteld.

Hij kreeg een gevangenisstraf van acht jaar en werd in 2010 vervroegd vrijgelaten. Sindsdien is Jannasch lijfwacht van het Surinaamse staatshoofd.

Vorige week maakte Bouterse op een persconferentie bekend dat er voor de functie drie kandidaten waren. Eén daarvan zou na een antecedentenonderzoek de nieuwe leidinggevende van de inlichtingendienst worden. Jannasch volgt George Biervliet op die vorige maand om niet nader genoemde redenen uit zijn functie werd ontheven.

Het xtc-laboratorium waarbij Jannasch was betrokken, was het grootste in het Caribisch gebied en produceerde de partydrug voor de Verenigde Staten. Het lag in een luxe woonwijk van Paramaribo en was opgezet onder leiding van de Nederlander André ten Kleij. Hij werd door de Surinaamse rechter veroordeeld tot tien jaar cel.

De Surinaamse president Desi Bouterse is in Nederland bij verstek veroordeeld voor cocaïnesmokkel. Hoewel de kroongetuige in deze zaak zijn belastende verklaring heeft ingetrokken, weigert de Nederlandse justitie de zaak te heropenen.

Presidentszoon Dino Bouterse zit in de Verenigde Staten een straf uit van zestien jaar voor drugs- en wapensmokkel.

Bron: nos.nl

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Zzp'er krijgt na 10 jaar alsnog zwangerschapsuitkering

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Hoe ver gaat de beleidsvrijheid van een minister als het gaat om een internationaal verdrag? Die vraag komt vandaag bij de rechter aan de orde in een nieuwe rechtszaak rond het zwangerschapsverlof van zzp'ers over de periode 2004-2008. Volgens vijf zzp'ers, gesteund door het Proefprocessenfonds Clara Wichmann, moet de overheid zoals staat in het VN-Vrouwenverdrag voor hen 'een voorziening' treffen. 'En een voorziening betekent dus een uitkering', zegt juriste Mac Vijn namens de kleine zelfstandigen. 'Hoe hoog de uitkering is, dáárin is de minister dan wel vrij. Maar er moet iets komen. Overigens was die uitkering voor zzp'ers 70 procent van het minimumloon, zowel vóór 2004 als na 2008.'

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Helft Nederlanders wil gereguleerde cannabisteelt | NU - Het laatste nieuws het eerst op NU.nl

Vijftig procent van de Nederlanders is voor het reguleren van cannabisteelt. Dat is ruim boven het percentage dat tegen het gedoogbeleid voor cannabisteelt is, namelijk 37 procent.

Dertien procent van de respondenten heeft hier geen mening over, blijkt uit cijfers van onderzoeksbureau Motivaction. Het onderzoek is gedaan in samenwerking met de Groningse hoogleraar Jan Brouwer.

Op dit moment wordt de verkoop en het gebruik van cannabis gedoogd, maar de teelt en verkoop van de softdrugs is strafbaar. Uit het onderzoek onder 1.019 Nederlanders blijkt dat 66 procent van de Nederlanders dat gedoogbeleid 'hypocriet' vindt.

Motvaction heeft de respondenten drie opties voorgelegd, namelijk het verbieden, reguleren of volledig vrijgeven van de hennepteelt. De meerderheid (57 procent) koos voor gereguleerde hennepteelt. Daarnaast wil 29 procent dat het verboden blijft, en 14 procent is voor het vrijgeven van de teelt.

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Spanje pakt Nederlandse cocaïnehandelaren op | NOS

De Spaanse politie heeft twaalf drugscriminelen gearresteerd en 3000 kilo cocaïne in beslag genomen. Volgens de Spanjaarden gaat het om leden van een Europees drugsnetwerk. Van de opgepakte cocaïnehandelaren komen er drie uit Nederland.

De overige arrestanten zijn zeven Britten en twee Spanjaarden. Zij werden vorige maand aangehouden aan de Costa del Sol en in de noordoostelijke provincie Galicië.

De politie zegt dat er sinds 1999 niet zo veel drugs in beslag zijn genomen in Spanje. Bij de operatie werden ook wapens en 1,2 miljoen euro gevonden.

Agenten vonden 700 kilo drugs in een vrachtwagen die onderweg was naar de stad Malaga. De rest van de cocaïne werd aangetroffen in een warenhuis in de plaats Pontevedra. Volgens de politie wilden de drugshandelaren de cocaïne overdragen aan een Britse bende in Malaga.

Een Spaanse politiechef zegt dat ook de Britse en Amerikaanse politie betrokken waren bij de actie.

Bron: nos.nl

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DNC Chair, Fueled by Booze PACs, Blasts Legal Pot

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the New York Times she continues to oppose legalizing marijuana — even as she has courted alcohol PACs as one of the largest sources of her campaign funding.

Wasserman Schultz, a House Democrat from Florida, said she doesn’t “think we should legalize more mind-altering substances if we want to make it less likely that people travel down the path toward using drugs. We have had a resurgence of drug use instead of a decline. There is a huge heroin epidemic.”

The fifth-largest pool of money the congresswoman has collected for her re-election campaign has been from the beer, wine, and liquor industry. The $18,500 came from PACs including Bacardi USA, the National Beer Wholesalers Association, Southern Wine & Spirits, and the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that during a recent period, “excessive drinking was responsible for one in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64.”

When pushed by interviewer Ana Marie Cox, Wasserman Schultz said that she was “bothered by the drug culture that surrounded my childhood — not mine personally. I grew up in suburbia.”

Cox pointed out that despite the dramatic problem with opiate abuse, the state has not made opiates illegal. Wasserman Schultz responded by saying that there “is a difference between opiates and marijuana.”

She’s right about that. An estimated 8,257 Americans perished from heroin-related drug poisoning in 2013. Nearly twice as many — 16,235 — died from opioid analgesics.

There have been roughly zero deaths from marijuana abuse.

In 2014, 64 percent of self-identified Democrats told Gallup they support marijuana legalization.

Bron: theintercept.com

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Psychologist admits MDMA use while with Kids Company clients | UK news | The Guardian


Helen Winter faces being struck off for being under influence of drug while with vulnerable young people

A psychologist faces being struck off after admitting being high on drugs while with vulnerable young people she worked with at Kids Company.

At a hearing at the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPS), Helen Winter said she took MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, and was under its influence while she was with two clients of the charity on or around 24 and 25 January last year.

She also admitted using drugs on several occasions during her leisure time and letting the vulnerable young people, known only as “clients C and D”, to stay at her flat. She denied offering MDMA to client C or actually taking it in front of that person.

Winter admitted to the hearing in London on Thursday that she was guilty of misconduct and that her fitness to practise was impaired.

Winter, referred to in proceedings as the registrant, also admitted testing positive for cocaine in a routine drugs test for Kids Company on 14 May 2014.

Daniel Mansell, the presenting officer, told the hearing: “In May 2014 concerns were raised in Kids Company about the registrant’s drug use and inappropriate interaction with service users.”

He said Winter took MDMA with a colleague, Nicci Shall, on a night out at a club in Vauxhall, south London, on 24 January 2014. It is alleged that in the club Winter went into the toilet where she took the drug with client C.

Mansell said: “On 24 January 2014 colleague A and the registrant went for a drink with other Kids Company employees. The registrant suggested that she and colleague A go to a nightclub in Vauxhall.

“They decided to purchase some MDMA on the way to the club and met with someone who provided this. Once the pair arrived at the club they took the MDMA and saw client C and D at the club and spoke to them.

“At one point, the registrant and Ms Shall and client C went to the toilet and went to the cubicle. The registrant offered client C some MDMA, client C accepted and they took it.”

He told the hearing that Winter and her colleague originally met at the Urban Academy, a pupil referral unit. Recalling the night in question, Shall said she had been drinking wine and Jagerbomb shots in the pub from 4pm when she and Winter decided to continue on to the Hidden nightclub in south London.

She said they took some MDMA in the toilet and then saw clients C and D, two clients of Kids Company in their early 20s. Later she went to a toilet cubicle with Winter and client C, where she said she watched the pair take drugs.

She told the hearing: “Helen Winter offered client C and me a dab of MDMA, which I declined. Helen Winter and client C consumed the MDMA.”

She said that after she left the club she felt “awful” about what she had witnessed and wanted to tell her boss, but was persuaded not to. She said Winter told her the clients had “had a good time and nothing had come of it”.

Shall said she felt appalled at the incident and turned to a colleague for advice. She told the hearing: “I went to colleagues and they advised me not to take it any further. I stupidly followed their advice and I regret that.”

She eventually reported the matter to the charity’s chief executive, Camilla Batmanghelidjh, and was interviewed for an internal investigation, but later raised concerns about the accuracy of the report.

She said: “I do not feel that the investigation report compiled by witness B accurately reflects my account of events. I challenged the accuracy of the report but was informed by Kids Company that it was an internal document and should remain confidential.”

Kids Company collapsed in August amid claims of financial mismanagement, and has faced a series of damaging allegations since. The charity, which is now under the control of administrators, is being investigated by officers from the sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse team of the Metropolitan police.

The charity was led by its founder Batmanghelidjh and was courted by politicians and celebrities. But since its suddencollapse it has been revealed that at least £42m of public money was handed to the charity despite there having been concerns about the way it was run.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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BREDA - De ontvoering van Gino Heeren (18) en Rien de Koning (42) in Breda is vermoedelijk het gevolg van een 'ripdeal'. Dat is een van de scenario’s die de politie momenteel onder de loep neemt.

Dat zei politiechef Hans Vissers donderdagochtend bij de presentatie van de jaarcijfers van de politie-eenheid Zeeland-West-Brabant.

Dreiging en geweld
Tijdens de bijeenkomst beschreef hij de criminele wereld en de dreiging en het geweld uit het milieu zelf. Criminelen verraden elkaar niet alleen om een groter marktaandeel te krijgen, beroven elkaar ook voor het geld (ripdeal).